1993
Emperor announce a commercial festival presentation of In The Nightside Eclipse, with no further album or other activities. And people make a fuss about it. I’m the last one against a reunion (Prometheus was truly exceptional) or against being properly rewarded in cash for uncompromising art. But this is not ‘celebrating a landmark’ album, it reeks of cashing in on an occasion while betraying ‘the spirit’ which people cite so often when talking about this era. Selling a ‘let’s all pretend it’s 1993’ concert is against everything that Emperor and BM stood for in 1993. If anyone would have told them in 1993 to perform the album 20 years later at Wacken as ‘one off reunion live show’, with the band actually long split up, the answer would have been all they’ll do is burn down the place and piss on the ashes. I’m sure there will be another nice Live at Wacken DVD, this time ‘celebrating true 1993 BM’. 1993? No matter if one can cope with it or not, but 1993 was violence, arson, terrorizing tour busses of non-serious bands. It was about boycotting commercial magazines (not phoning the magazine buddies, hey, what’s up, like Fenriz does these days, shown in that dreaded Norway film) and in general keeping the music away from parasites. It was led by personalities, not by a handful of commercial labels and magazines and promoters who capture, monopolize and share the cake.

MAGAZINES
The situation is unbearable. A certain business way of thinking is understandable for magazines, but these days things work only and exclusively in a corrupt way. One can buy interviews and good reviews like toilet paper in a shop. I know of cases where the critic was instructed ‘not to rate an album below 8 points because the label bought a big ad’. And another case, where we led a great interview including several appendices and further questions because the topics were fundamental and interesting. Yet the interview then could not exceed a definitive length because the ‘chief editor said the label only bought half a page of advertisement’, and this was the reason why the interview had to be half a page (or a page). This is not the exception but the norm, this is how the thoroughly corrupt scene of today works. This is why the same labels are featured all the time, always connected to their ads, not because the bands are so great (a few surely are). This is why today you only get fed something accompanied by an ad, at the time of an album release. Not like in the fanzine days, where the interview was led anytime, because the bands and individuals were great and always had something interesting to say, no matter if there’s a release or not. Exceptions prove the rule.

THE INTERNET
And on the other hand, one has the rotten internet ‘critics’, the cowards that either praise their darling bands up to the skies without any comprehensible thoughts. Because those ‘critics’ have the ‘cult vinyl’ and want to believe this is something special. Or they shatter the work of years with the blink of an eye, disrespectfully, probably being threatened by the content of the extreme work. Only such lowlives seem to bother writing these days, resulting in ridiculous reviews like DSO’s si monvmentvm getting 0 points from such ‘critics’, or De Mysteriis got 5 points. Giving such brainless jokers a platform for their showmanship is a sin. There is no red line, no continuous quality in critics anymore, like you had with old fanzines, where you knew the writer’s preference and distaste, where you could adjust to these and judge reviews according to those. It seems trolls feed Wikipedia and Metal Archives with wrong information and nullities to harm the work. I have read that Abigor’s lyrics were not only about Satanism but about ‘Paganism’ and ‘Cosmos’, so I wonder if someone had read the 200 lyrics or just picked out a songtitle or a cover? Abigor had one single lyric out of hundreds that told the story of a pagan warrior. And never wrote songs about the cosmos. Yet heaven and hell, the earth and the universe have been described by us throughout the past 20 years.
While the headline notes on Metal Archives, which should be an expert site, talk of things that are either incorrect or have not the slightest value for the history or understanding of Abigor.
There are no proper standards anymore, not within the ‘big’ magazines, not within the ‘free’ internet. And sadly, for some time now, not within the self proclaimed ‘underground’ (BM per se is underground, there is no ‘overground’ BM, BM is always underground!). There was a tight scene which fell apart in the past years because of many band’s selfishness, betraying the movement, and the concentration of a few commercial entities that undermined and now dictate the Black Metal scene.

‘THE UNDERGROUND’
Black Metal once was about creating something extreme that wasn’t done before. Not chewing over something again and again. 1993 BM was NOT a retro thing (beside one or another Bathory and Celtic Frost reference)! The today often ‘covered’ Burzum, Mayhem, Darkthrone or Ildjarn all were highly innovative. Simple, yes, often, but still innovative and by all means individual sounding! BM in 1993 proclaimed tradition in theory, but de facto the music was something very different to anything before. BM meant presenting something worthy in His name, not pump out easy riffs again and again that older bands have thrown away. There’s many primitive yet highly individual sounding things out there. Just like BM in the early days could be simple and primitive, of course, but it was always highly original and unheard of!!!!!!! And this is something that many don’t understand. ‘Covering’ old riffs is not traditional BM, the ‘true underground BM tradition’ in the spirit of the early 90s means to come up with something extreme and individual, no matter if primitive or technical! And it means one should not prostitute oneself for a sham 1993 gig, just because the young BM generation does not understand what 1993 really was about and some older ones ask for the same old things out of nostalgic reason, because it reminds them on their youth.

Fuck all this romantic dreaming of one’s teenage years, fuck nostalgic warming ups, fuck everyone that tries to catch cheap ‘undergound’ fame by stealing other people’s art and identities without understanding the extreme content behind it. Fuck the trend people that desecrate early 90s BM by hollowing out the monuments and copying it! We acknowledge De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas as the best BM album of all times, we acknowledge Det Som Engang Var and A Blaze In The Northern Sky as eternal references and will always be inspired by those masterpieces (which were all made with the devil’s fire of creativity, not just by empty human musicians!). But cashing in on 1993 ideas only is not true BM.

FORBIDDEN FUN
In general festivals are ok, and good fun is ok, not for BM as spiritual artform, but for people’s every day lives. Nothing against that. BM has overcome the ridiculous ‘Lord of silence that never laughs’ childish shit of the early 90s. Creating serious BM does not mean hiding in a cave, listening to Metal exclusively and wearing leather jackets. It does not mean living a stupid cliché. It does not mean to be a sad lad abandoning all easy joy and every day stupidities. But it means one’s art is dead serious and bears uncompromising content! And the thoughts presented in the lyrics are dangerous thoughts! And therefore serious BM still does not belong on such a festival stage like Wacken. Keep such ‘BM for the singalong masses’ slots reserved for the commercial darlings that write their ‘art’ for these occasions, for Rock´n´Roll bands like Immortal.

FALLEN HEROES
People swallow the recent ‘1993’ thing out of false nostalgic reasons, just as they swallow Grishnackh’s light worshipping, happy family promoting, revisionist and folkloristic brain excrements of the past years on thulean-perspective, only out of nostalgic reasons. Just because he did something brilliant in his past life. 20 years after he last came up with something relevant for BM, soiling his own legacy by constructing a false past, lying and betraying the movement ever since, denying his roots in Satanic Black Metal. And denying it means he erases his past, and who has no past has no future. Insulting BM as a whole, while at the same time fishing in the BM sea ‘to put food on the table’. Just as Fenriz belittles and reinterprets the dangerous movement of the early 90s to fit into the tame concepts of today.
But people follow such ‘oldschool’ trends and figures like sheep. Herd mentality. meeeeeh, meeeeeeeh.

It seems trolls feed Wikipedia and Metal Archives with wrong information and nullities to harm the work. I have read that Abigor’s lyrics were not only about Satanism but about ‘Paganism’ and ‘Cosmos’, so I wonder if someone had read the 200 lyrics or just picked out a songtitle or a cover? Abigor had one single lyric out of hundreds that told the story of a pagan warrior. And never wrote songs about the cosmos. Yet heaven and hell, the earth and the universe have been described by us throughout the past 20 years.
While the headline notes on Metal Archives, which should be an expert site, talk of things that are either incorrect or have not the slightest value for the history or understanding of Abigor.

For those wondering, the way metal-archives worked was that people were rewarded with "points" for adding new information. No verification or fact checking involved at all, the info went live immediately. But info could not be CHANGED except by mods. You became a mod after so many hundreds of points, but some people didn't stop there and seemed to treat the point total as an e-penis. There were some who would enter the same vague lyrical themes for dozens of bands. So, it took nothing to add info, but to change it you had to convince a mod, who probably has never heard of the band and thinks that "Satanism, Darkness, Forests" sounds about right and not worth changing. Same thing with band lineups. Unfortunately the site would rather provide wrong information than no information.

I always thought their review system was total bullshit too. It's funny to hear that 0% SMRC review is still around and still annoying people. I told m-a they should scrap that bit next to an album where it tells you the "average review score". It's only because of this visible average that people go out of the way to write troll reviews. Not like the average of 15 reviews is informative anyways.

Sure, it's just someone's website, but since it's still probably the main reference for metal on the internet, I think it deserves criticism. (It's not as bad as wikipedia, though!)

Didn't realise the magazines did that. Course I realised they gave priority to bands whose labels were buying so much ad space, but not allowed to review shit under 8?

Hard to disagree with the rest of his message. There's little new or exciting music thesedays. It's over flowing with jaded 35+ year olds who aren't excatly burning with the spark needed to create something brand new.

Never went to a festival in my life and won't be starting now but I always thought it must be akward standing there hearing something like Deathcrush in the blazing sun surrounded by very...errrmmm..alternative people.

Last edited by Weltering in Blood on Thu Sep 05, 2013 1:06 am; edited 1 time in total

Didn't realise the magazines did that. Course I realised they gave priority to bands whose labels were buying so much ad space, but not allowed to review shit under 8?

You are really surprised? It's quid pro quo, obviously. Labels pay ads and thus help to keep the magazine afloat, magazines treat those kindly who pay their bills.

But hey, who - in the age of internet - does really base his decision, whether to buy a record or not, on a review he reads in a magazine?

Guess I'm out of touch with things but then again I never really bought glossy magazines. I figured they'd feature more of their bands, longer interview space and so on, but dictating the outcome of reviews seemed to me to be something beyond their control. Obviously I'm an idiot. Figured if it was really shitty, they just wouldn't print it. Remember the Nordic Vision reviews?